Thursday, August 23, 2018

So.....I'm jumping!

I have been working on Honor Battle since January and now I hope Tom Filsinger loves it half as much as I do. In October I am leaving my job to set out on my own. My online store is being built to sell wrestling games, and other merchandise. My company is called Armchair Promoter giving fans of wrestling the chance to run their own wrestling promotion.

Champions of the Galaxy was how I got started when they were black and white. Over the course of a couple moves, maturity, and marriage not necessarily in that order the game was gone. The reason I was intrigued by COTG in the first place was to create your own promotion. When I was young I had the old AWA action figures and created my own promotion. I had notebooks and signs with the matches of my pay per view on it. I loved it.

My mom hated it. She didn't know why a kid my age played with toys and her friends would ask her why she let me play with toys. Mom told me every time these encounters happened to maybe guilt me into stopping. It worked. I figured I was too old. I was early in high school. For years it bothered me thinking I was real immature then to play with wrestling toys, GASP! in high school where all teenagers do everything right.

Then after divorce and now in my early forties I bought, GASP! Champions of the Galaxy and loved it. I just didn't really tell anyone. I was way too old to play some wrestling game. Then I read Tom Filsinger's book. He talked about creativity and made me realize that when I was in high school and now at 45 I am just expressing creativity. That made me feel amazing. It gave me the freedom I needed to create my own addition and a store.

This is not the business I expected to own, but it's the perfect one. I want this game and future wrestling games to teach people how to tell stories in different ways. It doesn't have to be in the typical format like a book, movie, or television show. I want parents and kids to know that creativity is our future. It is what turns the world and we need to inspire one another to create and tell stories.

I discovered When to Jump by Mike Lewis and sat in Barnes and Noble and read the first fifty pages. I knew when I walked out that I needed to jump. As I read the stories about jumpers some were inspiring and some I had done already in my career. Regardless it was people who had the same fears and concerns I did. Now I'm ready.

Tomorrow I am telling my boss that I'm leaving in October. He knows this is coming, but maybe he didn't take me seriously. We shall see. I hope he doesn't remember that I told him I would stay until January, but I really can't wait. It's time to move.